New Taboos (6 page)

“You know when they're letting you out?”

“I'm a short-timer, girl. Four weeks and four days—If I don't mess up. Even a little screw up is bad. They find an excuse to keep you, they will. Some people … my friend Rudy, he and Steve messed up big. They'll never let him out.”

“They have to let him out sometime if they're not convicted of murder …”

Hortense shook her head sadly.

“No, girl, they
don't
have to. This isn't government, this is corporation stuff. They make their own rules here. You got to twist yourself around like a rubber band, stretch yourself into any shape they want. They punish people in here. They … Well, I found my way. That's all.” She extended the plastic spoon. “You eat up now.”

Faye swallowed some more soup. “How about someone like me?”

Hortense shrugged, and seemed to be considering a reassuring response.

“For real, Hortense. What do you think'll happen to me here?”

“For
real?
I heard you were going to
tell
on them. About Sub 18, all that other. I never heard of
anyone
reporting on them anything they didn't want said. I don't know what they're going to do with you. I surely do not. But they're not going to let you go. The McCrue company'd lose too much money, girl.”

4. OCTOBER

“Absconder unit for someone like you,” Rudy was saying, “is probably on the way to somewhere else. Maybe psyche eval, remand to the crazy pod. Maybe Sub 18.”

“I'm
not
staying in prison,” Faye said firmly. “I'm …” An autoguard trundled by on its wheels, watching them without turning its plastic and metal head, and she finished lamely, “I'm … just not.”

She was outside—but inside too. They were each allowed one hour in the outdoor exercise cages which
extended out from the back of absconder unit—they were steel mesh open-air pens with a gap of about five feet between them. It felt zoolike. Several human guards stood together, talking, across the courtyard area from her.
Lockiffers,
the prisoners called them. But being out here where she could see sky and sun was an enormous relief. Faye looked up at a wispy cloud, elegantly attenuated, startlingly white against the blue sky. She couldn't remember looking at a cloud so closely before—not since childhood. Or seeing a sky quite so perfectly turquoise-colored.

The breeze was coming from the south, wending its way between buildings. She could smell sage, and minerals. She could glimpse other prisoners in other cages beyond Rudy. They were all men.

“Rudy—how come they're keeping me here, where I'm the only woman? Letting me come outside like this … Why don't they put me in some woman's population?”

She thought she knew the answer. Hortense had hinted at it. She was hoping Rudy had another response.

He started to say something, then broke off. A moment later he shrugged and said, “One thing, you got sick. They got to get you well. So. Coming out here helps. And …” He broke off again, as someone walked up to the cages, shoes squeaking.

It was Gull, hands in his jacket pockets. He ignored Rudy and paused near Faye's fence, his gaze roaming freely over her. He had a look of speculation on his face. “You have ten minutes more out here,” he told her, before strolling on.

She thought about calling him back just to once more demand a lawyer, or at least the phone call she'd never
gotten. But they just shrugged, if they reacted at all, when she asked for those things. There was one possibility, something as wispy as that cloud. It probably wouldn't work.

Don't think like that. It has to work.

Rudy watched Gull till he was out of earshot. “Never see that guy around here,” he said, in a low voice. “He seems to be keeping you under some kind of personal surveillance.”

Faye wondered about Phil. Was this really all down to him? All this time, no one looking for her? It had to be his doing. He just hadn't seemed like that kind of person. He was no saint. But still …

Faye looked to see where the autoguards and the lockiffers were. None of them were close by. “Rudy …” She turned her back on the courtyard, making her voice as low as she could and still be heard by him. “There have to be cell phones in here somewhere. The prisoners have to …”

He shook his head. “Cell phones are bigtime contraband,” he said glumly. “Used to be people keistered them in. But you can't keister anything now—they got machines that look right through you. I haven't seen a cell phone in years, except when the guards use them—and even they aren't supposed to use them except in emergencies. No. Got to think of something else.”

Gull came into her cell right after breakfast the next morning; a stocky black guard with a heavy belly and yellowed eyes came with him, the man silent, except occasionally humming tunelessly to himself. The black guard had no
identification badge on, but he carried a set of handcuffs loosely in his hands. Both men had gas masks hanging loosely around their necks, in case of need. Outside the cell an autoguard waited, eerily silent, somehow radiating alertness. Faye could see its chest panel was open; inside the panel was a row of nozzles. “Be careful,” Rudy called, from across the hallway. He was shouting through the hole in the door. “They got that panel open, they're full on Dalek! They'll spray you with ‘ouch'!”

He'd told her about “ouch”—a gas that suffused your lungs with burning agony once you breathed it in. It paralyzed you with pain. He'd told her about the worm, too, and what had happened to Steve. She wasn't eager to fight with robots.

“What do you want, Gull?” she asked.

“We're moving you,” he said.

“For the record, I'm demanding a phone call and a lawyer,
again,
neither of which I've ever had. I demand them right now! I assume that robot records everything.”

“Not everything,” Gull said blandly. “Come on.”

The black lockiffer made the bored, twirling gesture with his hand that meant turn around.

The inside of Faye's mouth felt desiccated; her heart was pounding. She looked at the black guard, trying to catch his eye. “What's your name?” she asked.

He didn't look directly at her. Like Skaffel. He made the twirling gesture again.

“Turn around now,” Gull said. “Autoguard, be ready.”

Faye turned slowly around and put her hands together behind her back. She felt the cuffs pinch down,
closing cold on her wrists; she felt the discomfort in her shoulders. It was all becoming familiar.

“Turn around,” Gull said. “Go out the door. Turn right, ahead of the autoguard, take one step and then stop.”

Maybe this is all drama to scare me. Maybe this time they're letting me go.

She'd had that same thought many times before.

Now she walked out of the open cell door, turned right, took a step, and stopped. She saw a man looking at her from another cell. It was the trustee, Carlos. He was stuck in ACU because he'd been caught leading her to Subpod 18.

He nodded to her, with no bitterness in his face. She nodded back.

She heard Gull squeaking up behind her. “Go ahead, on down the hall,” he said.

Faye walked on, her knees weak. The ACU door clicked open ahead of her, directed by the robot. She walked through, down a short corridor. Another door clicked open. She was in Subpod 18. The walkway stretched ahead of her, concrete and iron on the left, old-fashioned barred cells on the right. But now she was seeing it in full light. She heard women talking to one another, one of them laughing, another crying, another calling someone a bitch hag, “just a fucking bitch hag, just a …” Bitch hag, over and over. They passed a cell where a black woman said something to her in a Jamaican patois too thick to understand.

The guards were fulsome presences behind Faye. Someone hissed a warning at their approach, and the women's voices quieted.

Then she came to an open cell.

“Enter the cell,” said Gull.

Feeling like she was sleepwalking, Faye stepped into the cell. The black guard slid the barred door shut behind her.

“Take a step back, toward the bars,” Gull said.

She did. The other guard reached through, unlocked her cuffs, and took them. She straightened her arms and stretched.

“Inmate Gloria Munoz, dinner is in two hours,” Gull said. “There'll be a consultation after dinner.”

Faye turned to see who Gull was talking to. He was looking straight at her. There was just the suggestion of a smile on his face. The black guard was walking away; the autoguard was waiting quietly, beside Gull.

“What did you say?” Faye asked.

“Gloria Munoz, dinner is in—”

“What?”

A woman she couldn't see in the cell to her right said, “Bitch, that your name, just shut up! You Gloria now!”

Some of the women laughed. One of them sobbed.

“You're not going to pull that bullshit,” Faye said, her voice cracking. She turned to the robot. “You record this! My name is Faye Adullah, my address is—”

“It's not recording now,” Gull interrupted. “You're wasting your breath. Here, look.”

He unclipped an electronic wand from his belt. One end of the wand held a sensor; the other end had a little screen, like a smartphone. He pointed the sensor end at her. “Reading your tracker now, and … Look.”

He held it so she could see the screen. She saw her face on the screen, a miniaturized mug shot. She saw a
number under the face, and under that, the name,
Gloria Munoz.

“I don't even look the part,” she said hoarsely.

“Guatemalan, illegal immigrant,” he said. “Extensive criminal record. Gloria Munoz. Get used to it.”

She looked him in the eyes and said in a low, flat voice, “I'm not going to get used to it.”

He returned the wand to his belt, and walked past the autoguard. It remained behind, for a long moment, seeming to watch her.

A woman laughed. A woman sobbed.

The robot rolled away.

Faye made herself eat part of her dinner, some kind of meat and cheese quesadilla from a package. She washed it down with water from her sink. She went to the toilet, tried to pee. Couldn't, though it felt like she needed to.

She went to the bunk and lay down. Her stomach burbled.

Gloria Munoz. Get used to it.

She picked at a paint bubble on the wall.

I should try to talk to the other girls
…

Later. There would be time. She just felt too limp. She felt like a fly badly swatted. Alive but broken, buzzing to itself as it slowly died.
Buzzzzz.

Faye closed her eyes. The women's voices seemed to merge into the buzzing … After a while the corridor lights went down. They didn't go out completely. The women got quieter. She heard footsteps, and a cell door opening, voices
she couldn't understand. She turned to look as someone walked by. It was the Jamaican woman, escorted by the heavy black guard, and a robot. She had her hands cuffed behind her.

“She going to the berdwar,” one of the women said, down the hall a little.

Berdwar?
Boudoir.
Rudy had mentioned a special cell …

Faye turned over on the bunk and picked at the paint bubble. Voices echoed down the hall, unintelligible. Perhaps half an hour passed.
The berdwar.

Faye closed her eyes.

Don't let them do this. Even if you have to kill yourself.

The bunk was old-style. It had metal-mesh under, that made sounds like a crow when she shifted. She might be able to unwind some of that mesh, sharpen it somehow, and tear her wrists up. Better to bleed to death than to …

“Gloria Munoz.”

Just ignore it. Don't respond to that name.

The cell door clicked. She turned to see who was coming in.

“Gloria …” Gull's voice.

“My name is Faye Adullah.”

He seemed to have come alone, with not even an autoguard. He licked his lips, looking unusually self-conscious, his arms gangling at his sides. He glanced behind him, then went to the wall beside her, leaned against it, arms crossed over his chest, and spoke in a low voice. “I can arrange it so that you don't have more than one person. One man only—if it's me. Otherwise there'll be a
lot
of men. They have money and power, these guys, and they
can do most anything with you and you wouldn't like it. If you just give yourself to me, and I mean without a fight, I can … you know … you'd have your own room. There's a boudoir building and you could have your own … And I'd make it all easy …”